The Gypsy Fortune Teller attracts the curious at Musee Mecanique, one of the world's largest collections of antique arcade attractions.

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

The Gypsy Fortune Teller attracts the curious at Musee Mecanique,...

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Dan Zelinsky uses roller skates to get around Musee Mecanique, his giant collection of antique arcade machines, in San Francisco, Calif., Friday, December 7, 2012.

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

Dan Zelinsky uses roller skates to get around Musee Mecanique, his...

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Gap-toothed favorite Laffing Sal greets visitors near the museum's front door. "I love the effect she has on visitors," Zelinsky says. "She is multilingual in that everyone knows how to laugh."

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

Gap-toothed favorite Laffing Sal greets visitors near the museum's...

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Mechanically operated musical instruments are also featured in the museum.

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

Mechanically operated musical instruments are also featured in the...

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Dan Zelinsky owns one of the world's largest collections of mechanically operated musical instruments and antique arcade machines. They are housed at Musee Mecanique, a warehouse in Fisherman's Wharf that is open to the public, shown in San Francisco, Calif., Friday, December 7, 2012.

Dan Zelinsky roller-skates to a halt and stares at his visitor while smiling just slightly. Then he's off again, beckoning joyously like a modern-day Willy Wonka.

This factory is not about chocolate, but it is about fun. Zelinsky is the owner and operator of Musee Mecanique, the arcade emporium at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Zelinsky's assortment of more than 300 antique games and musical instruments is one of the largest private collections of coin-operated art in the world, built up lovingly by his father, and formerly housed at Playland-at-the-Beach near the Cliff House.

Zelinsky - who is a mix of mad scientist and protracted adolescence, an inventor of new games and fixer of old ones - glides to a stop in front of his oldest machine, a Praxinoscope built in 1884 as an early animation device. He puts a quarter in and watches it spin, images of a young lady jumping rope going round and round.

Then he's off to the Guillotine, made in England in the 1940s, where a tiny figure has his head lopped off. Zelinsky has a number of guillotine games, including a French execution, where he marvels not at the action but at the great woodworking and castings. There's also a lynching game, and an opium den piece, where mysterious things happen behind closed doors.

Zelinsky, a youthful 60, wears a pin on his shirt reading "I work here" and keeps his Levi's heavy with change, quarters only. He grew up with many of the games in his basement. His father, Edward Galland Zelinsky, started his collection at age 11 when he won five gallons of oil in a bingo contest and sold them to his piano teacher for 75 cents, which he then used to buy his first game - put a penny in, get five balls, and watch them go around.

Learning the works

The first machine funded the next and the next, like dominoes. The elder Zelinsky opened his arcade at Playland in the 1960s, after buying the collection that had been operated there for decades under the name Musee Mecanique.

"He started with one game, and now there's this," Zelinsky says proudly of the work of his father, who passed away a decade ago. Zelinsky started working full time at Musee Mecanique at Playland in 1972, when he would make the rounds on a skateboard. He switched to roller skates in 1975, when the skateboard was stolen.

Zelinsky already had a deep love for the games and instruments, but soon developed another interest. In the early 1980s, he took his first machine shop class at City College.

"Just the first 60 seconds of the class, with the smell of the oil and the sight of all of the machine tools, I was in love," Zelinsky says with a sigh. "It was like, 'You're thirsty, here is a glass of water.' "

He continues his tour, weaving in and out of the tourist-heavy crowd on a recent Friday afternoon. The 9,300-square-foot space at Fisherman's Wharf, at the end of Taylor Street at Pier 45, has double the floor space of the site near the Cliff House, which had room for 180 games.

Photo booths' upkeep

Zelinsky glides by old photo booths, "which are really popular, but high maintenance." The Model 14s require constant upkeep, from the chemicals used to the temperature set. Zelinsky made a book out of photos people left behind.

He passes Skee-Ball and air hockey games, pinball, foosball and fortune tellers, "games of chance and skill." He pauses before an antique air hockey game with the two players nickel-plated and painted. Then he laughs. "Here's the Arm Wrestler, which was in 'The Princess Diaries' movie. We were at the Cliff House, and they did something like three days with 16 hours a day of filming."

Asking Zelinsky to name his favorite game is like getting him to name his favorite son: "They're so different." His gaze followed a group of visitors. "I love watching people interact with the games. There are people who have never dropped a coin in a slot and had something this fun happen."

He skates over to the Hammer, a huge strength-testing game that he built from scratch. "It's like what you see at the carnival where you try to ring the bell." He gives it a try before exhaling. "This is the 'I give up' button." he says. He moves on to the Crybaby, a machine that depicts a bleary-eyed dad up at 2:30 a.m. trying to care for his crying baby.

"One night when my son was 3 months old, it was my time to feed him," Zelinsky recalls. "I went in and sat down and recorded him crying. So the baby you hear is my son, Connor. I remember my wife coming in and seeing me recording our crying son, and she just shakes her head."

He stops in front of End of the Trail, his wife's favorite machine - and the one that elicits the most complaints. It is a scene out of the Wild West - without much action. Put a quarter in the slot, and the wind blows through the tattered sheet of the small wagon. "That's it," he says, watching the slight movement caused by a hidden fan. "Customers complained it didn't do anything, and so I took it out. Then they complained that I had taken it away."

Looking at the base of the game, he notes that he has had to replace the planks where holes have been kicked in by disgruntled visitors.

"A lot of the machines are like that, where you have to stand there, be mellow, and relax," he says. "You have to let the collection show itself off."

Not far away is one of the first pinball machines ever made, a simple device with pins stuck in the wood and balls that circle them. "Twist the knob and you can control the amount of poof you give it," he says.

Then he arrives at Laffing Sal, the gap-tooth, red-haired Playland-at-the-Beach icon, now situated near his front door. "I love the effect she has on visitors," he says. "She is multilingual in that everyone knows how to laugh."

Heading back toward his office, he says he has been scolded by private collectors for letting the public handle the antique machines. "The Deutsches Museum in Munich has a collection of mechanical musical instruments, and a docent takes visitors around and shows you certain things," he says. "My feeling is - and this is what my dad wanted - is that they are meant to be used for fun! I want it to be fun and hands-on. I want an arcade feeling."

Dreaming up new machines

The office, or tool shop, is where Zelinsky makes parts and tinkers on new machines he has dreamed up, whether a finger strength tester or an air compressor that blows up a smiley-face balloon.

Laughing but not joking, he says he still hears the arcade's sounds - particularly the unsettling cackles of Laffing Sal - when he arrives at his home in Mill Valley. His wife, Betsy Zelinsky, has a doctorate in neurophysiology. They have two sons, Connor, 22, and Kyle, 24.

At this, Zelinsky abruptly says he is needed on the floor. One of his treasured machines is misfiring. "This is a tremendous amount of work," he says, skating away. "But every time I come here, I say, 'Oh yes!' "